Noticing Your People

The other week, I went on a nature identification day with Mike Raine. Partly just for fun and partly for cpd for the Mountain Training Dlog.

I spotted these beautiful flowers, and no one knew what they were, but we spent some time looking with a magnifying glass at their exquisite beauty and then looked them up in an ID book and found it is Common Whitlowgrass,often found on limestone pavement. Once we'd spotted this one, we began noticing it everywhere!

I was reminded of a story I often share with clients about a Victorian botanist who travelled to the Alps to try to find a fabled flower.

After weeks and weeks of walking and searching, she was fed up, she'd not found a single one. Deciding to head home, she turned around and fell over.

Feeling pretty miserable, she lay on the grass for a while, the sun shining down. As she got up, she noticed a glimmer of white. Looking closer, she noticed it was the flower she'd been looking for!

After taking a closer look with her magnifying glass, she sketched it and wrote its description.

Walking back to her lodgings, she noticed more glimmers of white, and more and more. The same path she'd walked on every day for weeks was littered with the flowers she'd been searching for. Once she'd seen one, she saw so many more.

Searching for a sense of belonging, particularly with people, can be difficult to find. At times, it can feel hopeless. But once we find one, we much much easier find more.

Notice in your body, your nervous system, your emotions, your thoughts how it feels to be around the person who offers you the biggest sense of belonging/ acceptance/ love/ calm. Really notice the feeling as though looking through a magnifying glass, as though you're a botanist really identifying all the features of it.

Then, keep that in mind as you're around others. Who are the others that being around you notice those same or similar feelings? Often, once we've noticed them once or twice, they are much easier to spot.